In many organizations, and particularly organizations comprising or based on call centers, customers are the main if not the only profit source of the organization, and many efforts are invested in conquering new market segments and new customers. However, an absurd situation sometime occurs wherein an organization is more preoccupied with reaching new customers than preventing the churn of existing ones, even though existing customers usually require fewer resources from the organizations. The term customer churn, also referred to as customer attrition, customer turnover, or customer defection, is used to describe loss of clients or customers.
Organizations or organizational units thereof that handle customer interactions are often the richest source of information related to customers. Interactions between a customer and the organization are optionally enabled in multiple technologies, including telephone, video, chat, e-mail, fax and others. Such interactions may be associated with spoken or free written text, as well as unspoken gestures, such as emotional levels or call flow analysis data including for example talkover parameters, forms, screen events occurring on the screen of the agent handling the interaction, text files or streams and others. The interactions may further be associated with additional data, including Computer Telephony-Integration (CTI) data, Customer relationship management (CRM) data, and others.
The interactions are captured and stored, but an agent handling a particular interaction does not always access the data, and may not be aware of the overall situation of a customer, or sensitive enough to preliminary churning signs.
Thus retrospective analysis of the interactions of a churned customer may show that signs to the churning were present in previous interactions, a while before the customer actually churned the organization. Further, such analysis sometimes shows that the churning may have been evitable at the time the interactions took place, but is not evitable once the customer has already announced he or she is churning, and made arrangements with alternative organizations.
Thus there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus that will enable an interaction-rich organization increase customer retention by automatically predicting possible churning of customers, and optionally taking measures to prevent such churning.